In 2013, Threshold Editions published Shapiro's fifth book, Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans. Bullies is Shapiro's first book to be listed on The New York Times Best Seller List; the book debuted at #32 in the combined print and e-book nonfiction list on January 27.[13]

In January and May 2013, Shapiro was invited onto Piers Morgan Live to debate gun control.[18] Some media reports said that Morgan lost the debate,[19] in which Morgan slammed down a copy of the United States Constitution that Shapiro provided and calling it "your little book." Shapiro called Morgan a "bully" for arguing that conservatives are heartless in the face of gun deaths as opposed to debating the statistics, and Morgan said Shapiro believed that gun rights are meant to provide ordinary citizens the means to defend themselves against government tyranny.[20][21]

Following the debate, NewsBusters, a conservative website, criticized CNN for liberal bias for posting only a very small portion of the debate, leaving out many of Shapiro's critical conservative points.[22]

On February 7, 2013, Shapiro published an article citing unspecified Senate sources who said that a group named "Friends of Hamas" was among foreign contributors to the political campaign of Chuck Hagel, a former US Senator awaiting confirmation as Secretary of Defense as a nominee of President Barack Obama. In the article, Shapiro criticized the Obama administration for ignoring his questions about Hagel's foreign associations and called for full disclosure of Hagel's foreign ties.[23]

On February 20, Slate reporter David Weigel reported that he could not find any convincing evidence "Friends of Hamas" actually existed, based on personal interviews with Senate staffers, the conservative Center for Security Policy, and the US Treasury Department Terror Sponsors list.[24] Shapiro told Weigel that the story he published was "the entirety of the information [he] had."[25]

Subsequently, New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman reported on February 20 that he may have been the unwitting source of the "Friends of Hamas" allegation. Friedman said that the story arose in the course of questioning Republican aides over Hagel's connections to foreign terrorist groups, presuming that one of the aides had interpreted his asking about such political connections as evidence of their existence.[26] Shapiro responded by reporting that his source had averred that Friedman was not a source.[27][28]

In a column written for Townhall.com in 2003, during the Second Intifada, Shapiro proposed to expel the Palestinian population from the West Bank. In the article, Shapiro states that "The Jews don't realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements. There are no gas chambers here. It's not genocide; it's transfer. It's not Hitler; it's Churchill. After World War II, Poland was recreated by the Allied Powers. In doing so, the Allies sliced off a chunk of Germany and extended Poland west to the Oder-Neisse line. Anywhere from 3.5 million to 9 million Germans were forcibly expelled from the new Polish territory and relocated in Germany... The Germans accepted the new border, and decades of conflict between Poles and Germans ended...if Germans, who had a centuries-old connection to the newly created Polish territory, could be expelled, then surely Palestinians, whose claim to Judea, Samaria and Gaza is dubious at best, can be expelled."[29] Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg said, "this was the position of the extremist Meir Kahane, who was banned by the Israeli Supreme Court from participating in Israeli politics because of his racist views."[30]

A decade later, however, Shapiro reversed his position. In an article published on March 13, 2013, Shapiro wrote, "Some on the right have proposed population transfer from the Gaza Strip or West Bank as a solution. This is both inhumane and impractical. Moving millions of Palestinians out of areas they have known for their entire lives will certainly not pave the way to peace" and while "both right and left agree that a population separation is necessary," he proposes that Israel "has no choice but to weather [the anti-Israeli propaganda]" until a realistic solution comes to light.[31] More recently, Mr. Shapiro publicly tweeted "using the word 'Palestine' is silly, since it doesn't exist."[32] In August 2016, Shapiro explicitly disavowed his earlier article, writing in a tweet: "That column came out when I was 19 years old, in 2003. Some of us outgrow our moral and philosophical errors." [33]

On February 25, 2014, the UCLA Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC) convened to consider a resolution for the university to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. Shapiro appeared at his alma mater to deliver counterarguments to the resolution. Shapiro argued that the resolution constituted hypocrisy and selective moral outrage in targeting Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, which he described as far less egregious than the human rights violations carried out by other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, and by groups such as the Palestinians themselves. He pointed to the differences between Israel and the rest of the countries in the Middle East as it relates to the treatment of sexual and religious freedom and diversity, and made the claim that the BDS Movement is fueled not by true concern for human rights but instead by antisemitism.[34]

On February 25, 2016, Shapiro gave a speech at California State University, Los Angeles, entitled "When Diversity Becomes a Problem." Shapiro's speech focused on how the concepts of microaggressions and safe spaces were being used to suppress free speech in the name of diversity of skin color, while ignoring the value of diversity of thought.[42] In response to the announcement of the speech, hosted by the campus's chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, student protesters demanded that the speech be cancelled, labeling it as "hate speech." The university's president, William Covino, eventually announced the cancellation of the speech three days before it was to take place, with the intention of rescheduling it so that the event could feature Shapiro debating someone with opposing viewpoints.[43] In response to the cancellation, Shapiro said he would be attending the event anyway, and several lawsuits were threatened against the university for canceling the speech. As a result, Covino ultimately backed down and allowed the speech to go on as planned.[44] The day of the speech, hundreds of student protesters formed human chains to block the doors to the theater where the event was to be held, shoving away anyone who attempted to enter and starting several fights in the crowded lobby. Some students were ultimately able to enter the theater by being sneaked in through back doors, though the protesters soon found out and barricaded those doors as well. Shapiro eventually made it into the theater and began his speech, only for a fire alarm to be pulled by one of the protesters; Shapiro continued speaking regardless, calling Covino "cowardly" and referring to the protesters as "spoiled brat snowflakes" and "fascists."[45] After the speech ended, Shapiro had to be escorted out a secret exit by police and his own bodyguards, while those inside the theater were told that they could not leave since the protesters were preventing anyone from leaving. Only after Shapiro left did the protesters eventually disperse, and those inside the theater were allowed to exit.[46]

Three months after the CSULA incident, Young America's Foundation announced on May 19 that it was filing a lawsuit against the university (with Shapiro as one of the plaintiffs), claiming that the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the students were violated by Covino's attempted cancelation of the event, as well as the physical barricading of students from entering or leaving the event, and the encouragement of such actions by several campus professors.[47][48][49]

On November 15, Shapiro was invited to speak at DePaul University, at an event hosted by the school's chapters of the College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom. The event also featured feminist professor Christina Hoff Sommers and had a focus on the subject of free speech on American college campuses, particularly in the wake of the recent election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. However, partially due to a previous controversy when Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at DePaul several months prior, the university officially banned Shapiro from attending the event, as a speaker or an audience member. Shapiro vowed to appear at the event regardless.[50] Upon his arrival, he was blocked from entering the venue by a DePaul public safety officer, who informed Shapiro that he would be arrested if he tried to enter the hall.[51] Shapiro then called Hoff Sommers, who was speaking during the event at that moment, and informed her that he would move to another building nearby where he would be allowed to speak. Hoff Sommers and the audience subsequently moved to that building to join Shapiro.[52]

In May 2016 New York Magazine reported: "Shapiro...has increasingly found himself targeted by the so-called alt-right movement, a loose conglomeration of online personalities — many if not most of them anonymous — currently devoted to tweeting and posting their support for Donald Trump and attacking those who disagree, often in racist and anti-Semitic ways. They have been denigrating Shapiro as a “pussy,” a “cuck," a “Jew” and a “kike.”"[53]

In an article in National Review, Shapiro wrote: "I’ve experienced more pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism since coming out against Trump’s candidacy than at any other time in my political career. Trump supporters have threatened me and other Jews who hold my viewpoint. They’ve blown up my e-mail inbox with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They greeted the birth of my second child by calling for me, my wife, and two children to be thrown into a gas chamber."[54]

An article in The Washington Post quoted an Anti-Defamation League report that "focused in particular on the anti-Semitic tweets aimed at journalists, frequently those whose writing about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has displeased a large contingent of Twitter users who band together to attack these journalists online. The words most commonly found in the bios of the people who post these anti-Semitic attacks? “Trump,” “nationalist,” conservative,” “American” and “white...The target of the most anti-Semitic tweets, by far, was Ben Shapiro, a conservative writer who formerly worked for Breitbart and who does not support Trump." [55] Shapiro stated "I’m honored because being targeted by mouth-breathing idiots is a compliment – you know you’re doing something right if people who tweet pictures of gas chambers on the day of your child’s birth find you unacceptable as a human being." [56] He also said: "As the fellow who receives hook-nosed Jew memes more than any other journalist on the planet, I don’t believe that people ought to be suspended or banned from Twitter or Facebook for posting vile garbage, so long as it isn’t openly advocating violence. I make a habit of retweeting these pieces of human feces in order to mock their stupidity and to expose the fact that people like this exist." [56]